By RICK PETERSON
TopSports.news
Topeka High boys basketball coach and athletic director Ty Baumgardner confirmed Tuesday that he is leaving High to accept a coaching position at Collins Hill High School in Suwanee, Ga., where he coached earlier in his career.
Baumgardner has served as Topeka High's athletic director for two years and coached the Trojans' basketball team last season. Baumgartner's position at Collins Hill is pending approval by the district school board.
Topeka High boys basketball coach and athletic director Ty Baumgardner confirmed Tuesday that he has accepted a coaching position at Collins Hill High School in Suwanee, Ga. [File photo/TSN]
"My wife still lives in Georgia and has a really good job in the same school district, loves who she works for and we just couldn't, this last couple of years, find anything close to that here that we felt she should come here for,'' Baumgartner said. "I wasn't looking for a job. We were going to make it work here, but the the coach (at Collins Hill) that took my place when I left ended up leaving and going back to where he came from and they reached out to me to gauge my interest in possibly coming back.
"And it was just kind of one of those deals where it was like, 'Maybe this is a little bit of fate,' because quite honestly it's the only job I would have gone back to Georgia for. I had already been there before, so you have the familiarity of it, a lot of the same people are still there at the school and then it's only about 15 minutes from where we live. And at the end of the day the family needed to be back together.''
Topeka High posted a 4-17 record this past season, but made improvement over the 2020-2021 campaign and Baumgartner felt that improvement would continue.
"It's hard to leave because I've got a good group coming back here and I felt like we really laid the foundation for the future this year, but family's got to come first,'' Baumgardner said.
"Trying to finish this I think would have been fun, because it's going in the right direction. I know they'll hire someone good, similar to me in terms of the demands and the expectations. You're going to hold these kids accountable because they need it. They need to be coached hard on and off the court.''
Prior to coming to Topeka High Baumgardner served as a head high school coach for 19 years in North Carolina, Georgia and South Carolina, including a state title in North Carolina's largest class, following six seasons as a college assistant at Emporia state and Elon University (N.C.).
Baumgardner has compiled a career coaching record of 374-171 over his high school career.
He spent 10 seasons at Olympic High School in Charlotte, N.C., where he amassed a 222-63 record while winning seven conference championships and the 2013 state shampionship in Class 4A, the largest classification in the state. Olympic finished the 2012-13 season 30-0 and ranked No. 5 in the country by MaxPreps.
While at Olympic Baumgardner also won a city-record 59 straight conference games with a 42-game home winning streak.
Baumgardner then moved on to Collins Hill High School where his team captured only the second regional championship in school history while also setting a school record for most wins in a season at 25-5.
Baumgardner captured another regional championship at Westwood High School in Columbia, S.C., the second in school history with a school-record 25 wins in a 25-2 season.
Baumgardner has coached more than 50 players that went on to play collegiately, 18 at the Division I level.
Baumgardner's departure leaves Topeka High with three key positions to fill in the athletic department -- the boys and girls head basketball positions as well as the athletic director's job.
Trojan girls coach Hannah Alexander announced in mid-April that she had accepted a job at Andover High School.
